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Eudora Welty (1909–2001)

Author of The Optimist's Daughter

101+ Works 13,731 Members 238 Reviews 81 Favorited

About the Author

Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi on April 13, 1909. She was educated at the Mississippi State College for Women in Columbus, Mississippi, and at the University of Wisconsin. She moved to New York in 1930 to study advertising at the Columbia University business school. After her show more father's death, she moved back to Jackson in 1931. She held various jobs on local newspapers and at a radio station before becoming a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal program. Travelling through the state of Mississippi opened her eyes to the misery of the great depression and resulted in a series of photographs, which were exhibited in a one-women show in New York in 1936 and were eventually published as One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression in 1971. She stopped working for the WPA in 1936. Her first stories, Magic and Death of a Travelling Salesman, were published in small magazines in 1936. Some of her better-known short stories are Why I Live at the P.O., Petrified Man, and A Worn Path. Her short story collections include A Curtain of Green, The Golden Apples, The Wide Net and Other Stories, and The Bride of Innisfallen and Other Stories. Her first novel, The Robber Bridegroom, was published in 1942. Her other novels include Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, and The Optimist's Daughter, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972. She received the gold medal for fiction from the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1972. Her nonfiction works include A Snapshot Album, The Eye of the Storm: Selected Essays and Reviews, and One Writer's Beginnings. She died from complications following pneumonia on July 23, 2001 at the age of 92. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Eudora Welty

Works by Eudora Welty

The Optimist's Daughter (1972) 2,623 copies
One Writer's Beginnings (1983) 1,725 copies
Delta Wedding (1946) 994 copies
Losing Battles (1970) 698 copies
The Ponder Heart (1954) 582 copies
The Robber Bridegroom (1942) 497 copies
The Golden Apples (1947) 439 copies
Thirteen Stories (1965) 421 copies
On Writing (Modern Library) (2002) 208 copies
Eudora Welty Photographs (1989) 155 copies
Why I Live at the P.O. (1995) 132 copies
Country Churchyards (2000) 49 copies
The Shoe Bird (1964) 37 copies
Moon Lake [short story] (2011) 31 copies
Some Notes on River Country (2003) 31 copies
A Worn Path (1991) 22 copies
On William Faulkner (2003) 16 copies
Moon Lake and Other Stories (1777) 16 copies
Eudora Welty Reads (1998) 10 copies
Early Escapades (2005) 7 copies
Clytie 6 copies
Petrified Man (2014) 5 copies
Lily Daw and the Three Ladies (1972) — Author — 3 copies
Acrobats in a Park. (1980) 2 copies
Powerhouse 2 copies
Fictions (2000) 2 copies
Wide Net, the (1943) 1 copy
Delta Wdding 1 copy
[No title] 1 copy

Associated Works

To the Lighthouse (1927) — Introduction, some editions — 17,521 copies
The Best American Short Stories of the Century (2000) — Contributor — 1,556 copies
Death of a Salesman [critical edition] (1967) — Contributor — 1,255 copies
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 915 copies
The Best American Essays of the Century (2000) — Contributor — 775 copies
The Oxford Book of American Short Stories (1992) — Contributor — 744 copies
Short Story Masterpieces (1954) — Contributor — 676 copies
The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales (1992) — Contributor — 537 copies
The Oxford Book of Short Stories (1981) — Contributor — 510 copies
Great American Short Stories (1957) — Contributor — 495 copies
The World of the Short Story: A 20th Century Collection (1986) — Contributor — 462 copies
Points of View: Revised Edition (1966) — Contributor — 411 copies
Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women's Spirituality (2000) — Contributor — 372 copies
The Granta Book of the American Short Story (1992) — Contributor — 369 copies
Women & Fiction: Short Stories By and About Women (1975) — Contributor — 366 copies
The Portable Sixties Reader (2002) — Contributor — 326 copies
A Treasury of Short Stories (1947) — Contributor — 293 copies
The Best of Modern Humor (1983) — Contributor — 292 copies
100 Years of the Best American Short Stories (2015) — Contributor — 282 copies
The Treasury of American Short Stories (1981) — Contributor — 268 copies
Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems (2015) — Cover artist — 219 copies
The New Granta Book of the American Short Story (2007) — Contributor — 212 copies
We Are the Stories We Tell (1990) — Contributor — 194 copies
Murder & Other Acts of Literature (1997) — Contributor — 147 copies
An Anthology of Famous American Stories (1953) — Contributor — 137 copies
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories (2007) — Contributor — 134 copies
Mistresses of the Dark [Anthology] (1998) — Contributor — 121 copies
The Signet Classic Book of Southern Short Stories (1991) — Contributor — 121 copies
Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers (1995) — Contributor — 115 copies
Granta 115: The F Word (2011) — Contributor — 113 copies
Magical Realist Fiction: An Anthology (1984) — Contributor — 111 copies
The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology (1997) — Contributor — 98 copies
The Granta Book of the American Long Story (1822) — Contributor — 98 copies
American Short Stories (1976) — Contributor, some editions — 95 copies
Skin Deep: Black Women and White Women Write About Race (1602) — Contributor — 90 copies
Stories from The New Yorker, 1950 to 1960 (1958) — Contributor — 80 copies
Ten Modern Masters: An Anthology of the Short Story (1953) — Contributor, some editions — 74 copies
200 Years of Great American Short Stories (1975) — Contributor — 68 copies
Art of Fiction (1967) — Contributor — 51 copies
O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1943 (1943) — Contributor — 49 copies
Masters of the Modern Short Story (1945) — Contributor — 46 copies
Southern Dogs and Their People (2000) — Contributor — 39 copies
New Orleans Noir 2: The Classics (2016) — Contributor — 37 copies
The Signet Book of American Essays (2006) — Contributor — 36 copies
The Secret Self: A Century of Short Stories by Women (1995) — Contributor — 33 copies
Birds in the Hand: Fiction and Poetry about Birds (2004) — Contributor — 32 copies
Hot and Cool: Jazz Short Stories (1990) — Contributor — 30 copies
The Second Penguin Book of Modern Women's Short Stories (1997) — Contributor — 27 copies
American short stories, 1820 to the present (1952) — Contributor — 26 copies
The Seas of God: Great Stories of the Human Spirit (1944) — Contributor — 25 copies
Studies in Fiction (1965) — Contributor — 22 copies
The Robber Bridegroom (1978) 18 copies
Modern American Short Stories (1945) — Contributor — 15 copies
Mississippi Writers: An Anthology (1991) — Contributor — 14 copies
The Best American Short Stories 1955 (1955) — Contributor — 13 copies
Story to Anti-Story (1979) — Contributor — 13 copies
A Portrait of Southern Writers: Photographs (2000) — Contributor — 13 copies
Twenty-Nine Stories (1960) — Contributor — 13 copies
Stories of Initiation. (Lernmaterialien) (1978) — Contributor — 12 copies
31 Stories (1960) — Contributor — 12 copies
The Best American Short Stories 1943 (1943) — Contributor — 11 copies
Inward Journey (1987) — Contributor — 11 copies
The Penguin New Writing No. 36 (1949) — Contributor — 11 copies
The best of the Best American short stories, 1915-1950 (1975) — Contributor — 10 copies
The Caedmon Short Story Collection (2001) — Contributor — 8 copies
Open Secrets (1972) 8 copies
O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1941 (1941) — Contributor — 7 copies
Time to Be Young: Great Stories of the Growing Years (1945) — Contributor — 7 copies
Twenty-Three Modern Stories (1963) — Contributor — 4 copies
The College Short Story Reader (1948) — Contributor — 2 copies
Enjoying Stories (1987) — Contributor — 2 copies
Modern Short Stories — Contributor — 1 copy
The Avon Annual 1945: 18 Great Modern Stories (1945) — Contributor — 1 copy
Whole Pieces (1990) — Contributor — 1 copy
Stories of Sudden Truth (1953) — Contributor — 1 copy
15 Great Stories of Today (1946) — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

20th century (694) American (421) American literature (630) American South (141) anthology (1,256) autobiography (140) biography (145) British (264) British literature (250) classic (451) classics (547) collection (143) England (131) English (130) English literature (299) essays (404) Eudora Welty (134) family (173) feminism (142) fiction (5,183) literature (1,083) memoir (226) Mississippi (226) modernism (315) non-fiction (403) novel (718) own (193) poetry (174) read (302) short fiction (137) short stories (2,336) southern (261) southern literature (223) stories (197) stream of consciousness (187) to-read (1,852) unread (317) Virginia Woolf (145) women (228) writing (310)

Common Knowledge

Legal name
Welty, Eudora Alice
Birthdate
1909-04-13
Date of death
2001-07-23
Burial location
Greenwood Cemetery, Jackson, Mississippi, USA
Gender
female
Nationality
USA
Birthplace
Jackson, Mississippi, USA
Place of death
Jackson, Mississippi, USA
Places of residence
Jackson, Mississippi, USA
Education
Mississippi State College for Women (Mississippi University for Women)
University of Wisconsin (BA|1929)
Columbia University Graduate School of Business (1930-31)
Occupations
novelist
short-story writer
photographer
publicity agent
reporter
lecturer (show all 7)
teacher
Relationships
Porter, Katherine Anne (friend)
Aswell, Mary Louise (friend|correspondent)
Organizations
American Academy of Arts and Letters ( [1952])
Fellowship of Southern Writers (charter member)
Works Progress Administration
The New York Times
Harvard University (lecturer)
Junior League of Jackson (show all 7)
Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
Awards and honors
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980)
National Medal of Arts (1986)
National Book Foundation Medal (1991)
Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award (1991)
Rea Award for the Short Story (1992)
PEN/Malamud Award for the Short Story (1992) (show all 20)
Charles Frankel Prize (1993)
Distinguished Alumni Award (American Association of State Colleges and Universities ∙ 1993)
Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1987)
Cleanth Brooks Medal for Lifetime Achievement (1991)
Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur (1996)
America Award (2000)
National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal (1972)
Edward MacDowell Medal (1970)
National Medal for Literature (1980)
Common Wealth Award (1984)
Order of the South
National Women's Hall of Fame (2000)
National Humanities Medal (1992)
First living author published in the Library of America series

Members

Discussions

Delta Wedding Group Read - Discussion Thread in 75 Books Challenge for 2022 (November 2022)
October 2014: Eudora Welty in Monthly Author Reads (October 2014)
Eudora Welty- American Author Challenge in 75 Books Challenge for 2014 (July 2014)

Reviews

Laurel returns to her small Mississippi town from Chicago in time for her father to die after eye surgery. Her own husband died in the war a year earlier. Her mother has been dead for years after going blind.

Her father's clueless and stupidly cruel second wife, Fay, is Laurel's age. While Laurel embraces the past, her family's past, Fay shuns it. "The past isn't a thing to me. I belong to the future, didn't you know that?" The future doesn't look good to Laurel. She returns to Chicago after burning her mother's letters, her past life gone.… (more)
 
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Hagelstein | 91 other reviews | Jan 26, 2024 |
This is a collection of Welty's public writings about Faulkner, including a review of Intruder in the Dust; a deliciously wrathy letter to Edmund Wilson, who had critiqued the same novel with blinkers on, in her view ("there's such a thing as a literary frame of reference that isn't industrial New York City in 1948" she points out); a memorial tribute written for the Associated Press news service when Faulkner died; and some lectures and speeches. Lordy, I love this lady. She is right up there at the top of my list of people I wish I could sit down and talk to. And I'm pretty sure if she lived down the road, I could sit down and talk to her. She comes across as warm, witty, gracious, possessed of an intelligence I could learn from, totally lacking in Attitude but not about to take a lot of nonsense either. And, of course, she loves Faulkner the way I do...not academically, but like a slightly surly uncle who nevertheless tells terrific stories and sees things the rest of us would miss if not for him. She also reviewed a collection of Faulkner's Selected Letters. After pointing out that Faulkner would have hated the idea, but accepted the inevitability, of their publication, Welty dealt a bit with the content and the chronological presentation of the letters Joseph Blotner included in the chunky volume (there it sits, right on the shelf at the top of my desk). But then she wrote a paragraph that exemplifies why I do love her so. She said:
"No man ever put more of his heart and soul into the written word than did William Faulkner. If you want to know all you can about that heart and soul, the fiction where he put it is still right there. The writer offered it to us from the start, and when we didn't even want it or know how to take it and understand it; it's been there all along and is more than likely to remain. Read that."
Reviewed 2017
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laytonwoman3rd | 2 other reviews | Dec 20, 2023 |
I absolutely loved this inspiring memoir---it's a keeper, for sure! I remember reading, "Why I Live at the PO" in high school and it was really fun and encouraging to read her perspectives on how her life influenced her writing. I love how she deconstructed the conversations and experiences of her childhood to see how they shaped her as a writer. My own has done the same for me...as has all other writers', I assume.

I liked how she talked about listening for stories. When I'm traveling I'm LOOKING for stories. Just another great reminder of the importance of carrying a journal to record experiences as they happen. About two-thirds into the book, I ordered a book of her short stories. I'm looking forward to reading more!

My favorite quote came from page 57: "Emotions do not grow old." I read this book while my husband and I were on a visit to Oregon to visit his father. He has a terminal illness and we both knew this very likely could be the last time we'd see him. This quote made me think of Leo and how, though his body is dying, his love for his family is very much alive. I hope I always remember the proud look he had and the shine in his eyes as he introduced my husband to his nurses, "Yes, this is my son." He was so excited and surprised to see my husband show up in the hospital---he didn't know we were coming. There was laughter, tears, frustrations, joys, and more the few days we spent with him---all very real emotions from a family who very much loves and respects their father. I love this quote. It will always make me think of Leo.
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classyhomemaker | 24 other reviews | Dec 11, 2023 |
Had a dreamy quality that I enjoyed. The atmosphere was kind of beautiful and the descriptions were great and the scenes felt real. I liked it.

Weird/bad points: there was pretty much no conflict involved in the book even though quite a bit was set up, which was bizarre. For example, there are constant references to Troy's seeming unsuitability as a husband but nothing comes of it - and there's not really much explanation of WHY people talk about him as unsuitable. Near the end, Shelley witnesses him apparently shooting a black worker who's threatening him with a knife. The scene lasts maybe a page and she says it shows some sort of extreme unsuitability, but the event is never referenced again and Shelley makes no further comments about Troy, in thought or otherwise. The event itself is incredibly confusing and I have no idea what went on. Weird. There are a couple other similar scenes, which presumably have deeper implications or ones which aren't the obvious but aren't referenced again and don't seem to have an impact - George talking about "sleeping with" the vagrant girl Ellen finds in the woods - Ellen seems shocked but again nothing else happens, it doesn't affect their relationship and the girl is referenced once again in an ambiguous context. There are several times the author seems to be describing some sort of romantic tension between George and other people but maybe I'm reading too much into it. Every character is prone to going into deep reflection at every opportunity, which is pretty ridiculous but adds to the dream like quality of the book and really wasn't bad. There are a lot of named characters that it's impossible to keep track of and don't really have a point.

Bigger things: I note an event re: violence above - violence is treated as tainting someone in this one case. Yet Battle beating children happens often and is treated incredibly casually. He also threatens extreme violence casually and the one reference to this plays it off as a "oh haha our Battle!!" thing.
None of the Fairchilds are ever shown engaging in any work. Yet at the end of the book several describe how "draining" and "tiring" the wedding has been. The disconnect between words and experience is noticeable. The only reason I can see Troy being unsuitable, in fact, is in his job as an overseer - in doing their work, the work of the plantation owner running their lands, he's somehow "unclean". His presence impinges on the "paradise" of the Fairchilds' life - they have no experience of the reality of where their (obviously absolutely massive) income comes from. The thing is, this theme is hardly developed and shows mostly in omission, making me curious how the author felt about this.
The black workers have very little presence, even though they should be a constant presence around the house as domestic servants. The scenes that feature them show them as personality-less - they just obey orders happily - with 2 exceptions. Right at the end of the book, one says they don't like roses. This upsets Ellen, although we're not given much more than that. One character is visited at her house to ask about something lost and the Fairchilds who visited treat her vaguely dramatic searching as malicious - the one example of personality is shunned and considered bad.
In fact, I could think of only two other instances of things being treated as malicious or wrong in the book - the first is the mentally disabled preteen Maureen (who is referred to in rude terms) and the other is George's wife Robbie, who is again considered "unsuitable" but especially for leaving him when she feels hurt. Their real crime seems to be that they disturbed in some way the Fairchilds' untroubled existence.
I don't know if my view of the Fairchilds as horrible people who live an incredibly happy life merely by ignoring or shunning things that disturb it is an unreasonable one, but to me it was the only one that made sense and still let me enjoy the book.
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tombomp | 22 other reviews | Oct 31, 2023 |

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Statistics

Works
101
Also by
94
Members
13,731
Popularity
#1,690
Rating
3.8
Reviews
238
ISBNs
263
Languages
12
Favorited
81

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